Obliviate
by Lena xo
Summary: Remus Lupin, the last marauder, has spent over a decade trying to forget the pain of one friend's death and another's betrayal. What happens when he sees Harry for the first time and is forced to confront it? One-shot, set in PoA.


Obliviate

For someone who had spent over a decade trying very hard to forget his past, Remus Lupin had been forced to do an awful lot of remembering recently.

It had all started, of course, with Sirius' face on the cover of the Daily Prophet one morning when Remus opened his paper. There had been other things, other glimpses - his application for the Defence Against the Dark Arts position, his interview with Dumbledore – but the gaunt eyes of Sirius Black staring up at Lupin over his morning coffee was really what brought everything back. It made no logical sense, for the haggard, screaming man in the image was so far a fall from the man Remus had known. Or, at least, thought he had known. Yet everything came rushing back when he saw that image.

Peter, James and Lily he tried to forget out of pain. He pushed back at the flood of sadness that filled him when he thought of them, and so he pushed down the memories of them. But the agony that filled him at the thought of Sirius was a different one.

 _I should have known_.

He never would have called it.

 _Did_ Sirius _even know back then_?

That was the question that haunted him the most. How would fifteen-year-old Sirius Black have reacted if he had known his future self would betray one of his best friends and cost him his life? Or that he would outright murder the other? Would he have been abhorred and horrified, or was the potential to be a murderer already there in him? Desperately, naively perhaps, Remus hoped for the former. That at some point during their lives, on both of their parts, Sirius' friendship with them had been genuine and real, even if it had morphed into something much more horrifying at a later date.

All Remus knew is that he would have never been able to call it, right up until it actually happened.

Either way, it hurt to think of it, and so Remus put all of his mental efforts into not doing so.

The pain did not become easier over the years, but managing it became a habit that was almost second-nature. The exception had been an owl from Rubeus Hagrid just a few years ago, asking for photos of Lily and James for their son, Harry. Remus had written to his mother and asked her to send the photos she had in a box in her attic somewhere to Hagrid, so he could pass them onto Harry. A boy Remus had met only a handful of times, before his parents had been killed and Harry whisked away to the Muggle world. Sure, Remus had always intended to contact him at some point. But then he would remember that it had been Sirius, not Remus, who had been chosen as Harry's godfather. When he had found out there had been a minor pain, and then guilt over the jealousy, which was quickly alleviated when James cornered him and informed him that he would have the next child. A child who would never exist, and the wrong godfather chosen for Harry.

More pain. More memories that hurt to remember, and so it was easier to forget.

And now Remus was on the Hogwarts Express, trying desperately to stay awake. It had certainly not been his first preference to catch the train in with the students, but the full moon had been only last night. Remus could have rode it out in the castle, but the idea of it made him queasy, especially with his old haunt of the shrieking shack nearby.

And so he was on the train, ghosts flashing about him of four school boys on here over the years, of bumping into a boy with black messy hair and round-rimmed glasses, and a grin as he offered to share a train compartment with a quiet Remus.

He put his luggage up on the compartment above him, and sat down in the corner of the seat. _I'll just shut my eyes for a moment,_ he thought, and then promptly fell asleep.

Murmurs of voices echoed around him as he drifted in and out, but his dreams remained hazy. He had a vague image of himself in front of the Great Lake at Hogwarts, a teenage version of himself standing in his Hogwarts robe. James' voice behind him was encouraging him to jump in and when he refused to, James pushed him.

The icy flush that poured over him was not water but it woke him nonetheless.

The compartment was filled with students, but the train was still and in the dark. Haphazard voices overlapped each other as they argued, and Lupin tried to squint outside to see what was happening.

They were not at Hogwarts yet.

"Quiet!" hissed Remus, and the voices around him stilled suddenly. He conjured a flame in his palm and looked around at the students sitting with him.

Pale, anxious faces looked at him but it was one that he looked at straight away. A skinny boy with pale skin and black, unruly hair and black glasses stared back at him.

 _James,_ his mind thought even as he realised that it was Harry. A memory of thirteen-year-old James sitting across from him with a mischievous grin on his face immediately came to mind. Except for his eyes, it could have been James sitting across from him.

But Harry was not smiling, he was terrified, and Remus reprioritised and stood up.

"Stay where you are," he whispered, and stood up to exit the carriage.

The door opened before he could get there.

A darkness almost tangible filled the room, and Lupin felt the weight of it pressing against his chest. The memories whispered at the edge of his mind, and Lupin felt the depression that had weighed on him in the aftermath of Sirius' arrest. The betrayal, the pain and the guilt for having not seen it earlier pressed upon him from all sides.

There was a thud as in front of him Harry hit the floor, eyes rolling back, body twitching. Remus heard a gasp from the bushy-haired one, but his attention remained focussed on the Dementor. It turned its head and gazed back at him with its unseeable stare.

Remus stepped over Harry's convulsing form on the floor and pulled out his wand.

"None of us is hiding Sirius Black under our cloaks. Go."

The Dementor remained unmoving, and behind Remus Harry's movements grew more violent.

" _Expecto Patronum_ ," said Lupin. His wolf, its shape barely formed, burst from the end of his wand and the Dementor turned and fled, the patronus close behind it.

He watched as Harry's friends roused him, part of his mind taking in details of the scene whilst the other part abstracted itself, watching.

He looks almost exactly like James, thought Remus.

There were details there that he had forgotten. How his hair rumpled at the back, sticking up at all angles. And just how skinny his friend was during his teenage years, since James had filled out as he grew older. And then Harry's eyes opened, confused and disoriented, and Remus could suddenly see Lily's, the way they narrowed and glared at James when he did something ridiculous, the way a red eyebrow arched over one as she disapproved of Remus supporting their mischievous plans, the way they crinkled in the corners when they smiled...

Harry was neither James nor Lily, but parts of both of them. And the main emotion that Remus had associated with Harry but behind a wall of excuses – he wasn't godfather, he was too dangerous to be around Harry, he deserved better than the worst of his father's friends – came tumbling down and the guilt flooded him, that he hadn't been around enough for Harry. Because whilst Remus might have the luxury of forgetting, Harry had nothing to remember, and Remus was the last living person alive who had known his father better than anyone.

Except, of course, for Sirius.

Remus felt a wave of anger course through him, which steeled his determination. It was not just coincidence that Remus had gotten this position the year that Sirius Black had broken out of Azkaban. He had to forget his friend, the laughing, mischievous teenager Padfoot and focus on the reality that was the murderer, Sirius Black.

Sirius would be coming for Harry, and when he did, Remus would be waiting for him.

 **AN: It is 6am and I should really not be up, but I was re-reading Prisoner of Azkaban recently and I couldn't help but wonder what was going through Remus' mind during this scene. The tragedy of Lupin's whole life has always gotten to me; this is where JK Rowling's cruelty really reared its head I think. The fact that Remus Lupin is one of my favourite characters is, of course, completely beside the point.**

 **Love,**

 **Lena xo**


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